Peterson, Harris, etc....

Raoul said:
It speaks to the fact that he has broad problems with religious ideas in general and not just one religion. The people who puke up these insults as a device to create their own internet content would be wise to engage Harris on the merits of his criticisms as opposed to labelling him as x or y because they don't have an answer for his crtiques.
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Why would anyone even engage with him? especially given how slanted his views are on islam. I am not too bothered by Harris and his views to begin with. What is scary to me are his followers who refuse to see his views for what they are. Instead, they pull all sorts of bs arguments to justify his islamophobic views.
 
entropy said:
Why would anyone even engage with him? especially given how slanted his views are on islam. I am not too bothered by Harris and his views to begin with. What is scary to me are his followers who refuse to see his views for what they are. Instead, they pull all sorts of bs arguments to justify his islamophobic views.
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Well ultimately we are just debating ideas so if one person believes the opposite side has a slanted view then that can be debated to see where the discussion goes. The likes of Harris and Maajid seem quite content to debate their view points with opposing ones; its the Greenwald/Fisher/Aslan cabal who are attempting to shut down debate by squashing views they have no legitimate answer for.
 
2cents said:
The problem of Western impact on non-Western societies isn't IMO primarily one of the violence that undoubtedly accompanied it, it's more to do with the uninvited force of this modernity and the subsequent sense of alienation that followed. In terms of the Islamic world, consider this - prior to the 19th c., a Muslim's sense of his place in the world, as a Muslim, was defined by a range of different beliefs and institutions - belief in God and his final message, belief in the unity (not necessarily political) and primacy on earth of the umma who accepted it, and subsequently the belief in the inevitable triumph of Muslim arms; institutions such as the caliphate, which represented in theory the political unity of the umma, the shari'ah, which ensured a certain measure of legal conformity across a politically divided umma, and the Sufi orders which provided transnational/continental networks for merchants, scholars and travelers to tap in to from Spain to India.

The modernity which arrived with the West undermined pretty much every single one of these - belief in God and his final message by the introduction of Western science; the unity of the umma by the idea of nationalism; the political and military supremacy of the Muslims and the primacy of the caliphate by the triumph of Western arms; the shari'ah by the introduction of Western legal codes; and the Sufi networks by the imposition of modern borders and alternative secular forms of transnational solidarity. So to be consciously Muslim today is in many ways to be confronted with an assault on your sense of place in the world which draws many to the simple and reassuring claims of Islamism in its various forms.
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There's a tendency in the academic thought and teaching you're borrowing from to listen to the academics of the time and crowd out the average Mo of the era (for good reason, the average Mo didn't have a twitter account or leave notes for prosperity). I suspect that, much like today and probably all of human history, the average person living wherever and whenever is more worried with surviving than the theological and identity implications of which empire rules them. If anything, the truly devout of the era will only have their faith strengthened, as often happens in oppressive regimes with religious folk hiding textbooks and meeting in secret, striving to overcome.
 
Raoul said:
Well ultimately we are just debating ideas so if one person believes the opposite side has a slanted view then that can be debated to see where the discussion goes. The likes of Harris and Maajid seem quite content to debate their view points with opposing ones; its the Greenwald/Fisher/Aslan cabal who are attempting to shut down debate by squashing views they have no legitimate answer for.
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yeah..that tends to happen if your views are islamophobic. That is the only drawback.
 
entropy said:
yeah..that tends to happen if your views are islamophobic. That is the only drawback.
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Islamophobic here, is merely a cowardly way of shutting down an otherwise worthy debate that needs to be had. Its a way of saying "I really don't have a credible response to what you are proposing, therefore I'm going to call you a bad word".
 
I really doubt Harris and Maajid are islamaphobic. Harris is basically a statistician pretending to be a *********** and even if he involves himself in relatively pointless narrow sections of the debate, that's just what statisticians tend to do, get lost in all the numbers. And Maajid is just a very liberal compared to other Muslims.
 
It depends on what your definition of Islamophobia is I guess but I personally don't think criticizing Islam is being Islamophobic. All ideas are open to debate and criticism. Hating people because they follow Islam would be Islamophobic and bigoted but I haven't seen any indication of that from Harris (Happy to be corrected on this).
 
Hitchez said:
It depends on what your definition of Islamophobia is I guess but I personally don't think criticizing Islam is being Islamophobic. All ideas are open to debate and criticism. Hating people because they follow Islam would be Islamophobic and bigoted but I haven't seen any indication of that from Harris (Happy to be corrected on this).
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I think some people have a much broader definition of it, which might be what he was referring to. For most, it simply conjures up an irrational hatred of Muslims, which I'm sure neither Harris or Maajid are (Maajid is a Muslim). For some however, the term has been extended to anyone who critiques Islam by portraying it in a negative light, at which point we may as well not even bother discussing religion at all since every religion has things worth criticizing.
 
Raoul said:
I think some people have a much broader definition of it, which might be what he was referring to. For most, it simply conjures up an irrational hatred of Muslims, which I'm sure neither Harris or Maajid are (Maajid is a Muslim). For some however, the term has been extended to anyone who critiques Islam by portraying it in a negative light, at which point we may as well not even bother discussing religion at all since every religion has things worth criticizing.
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And there are many many such people (and rising every day seemingly) around these days both in the general public and in elected offices around the world. Hell, the two largest democracies in the world have elected two overtly Islamophobic men as leaders of their respective countries and some might say precisely because of that. Let's reserve such strong worlds for people who really are hateful bigots and not the Sam Harris' of the worlds.
 
Silva said:
There's a tendency in the academic thought and teaching you're borrowing from to listen to the academics of the time and crowd out the average Mo of the era (for good reason, the average Mo didn't have a twitter account or leave notes for prosperity). I suspect that, much like today and probably all of human history, the average person living wherever and whenever is more worried with surviving than the theological and identity implications of which empire rules them. If anything, the truly devout of the era will only have their faith strengthened, as often happens in oppressive regimes with religious folk hiding textbooks and meeting in secret, striving to overcome.
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I'm not entirely sure how this addresses what I wrote - I'm not arguing that the 'average Mo' was less concerned with survival than with God, I'm arguing that he wouldn't have considered there to be a distinction between the two. A peasant in pre-modern Egypt would have been acutely aware that his survival depended on the annual flooding of the Nile, and preparing for this event would have been the primacy concern of his life - it just never would have occurred to him that the flooding wasn't a manifestation of God's will, to the extent that the question of God's role in the flooding wouldn't have been raised at all, it was taken for granted.

The average Mo isn't entirely lost to history, even at the most parochial level we can be pretty certain his religious life was defined at least by devotion expressed at a local Sufi shrine which, whether he knew it or not, implied a broader institutional connection that reached well beyond the confines of his village. But it's of course correct to say that he wasn't a maker of history in an individual sense.
 
Raoul said:
Islamophobic here, is merely a cowardly way of shutting down an otherwise worthy debate that needs to be had. Its a way of saying "I really don't have a credible response to what you are proposing, therefore I'm going to call you a bad word".
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What is a credible response to someone who is racist or bigoted towards other religions or cultures?
 
2cents said:
I'm not entirely sure how this addresses what I wrote - I'm not arguing that the 'average Mo' was less concerned with survival than with God, I'm arguing that he wouldn't have considered there to be a distinction between the two. A peasant in pre-modern Egypt would have been acutely aware that his survival depended on the annual flooding of the Nile, and preparing for this event would have been the primacy concern of his life - it just never would have occurred to him that the flooding wasn't a manifestation of God's will, to the extent that the question of God's role in the flooding wouldn't have been raised at all, it was taken for granted.

The average Mo isn't entirely lost to history, even at the most parochial level we can be pretty certain his religious life was defined at least by devotion expressed at a local Sufi shrine which, whether he knew it or not, implied a broader institutional connection that reached well beyond the confines of his village. But it's of course correct to say that he wasn't a maker of history in an individual sense.
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Perhaps they did attribute it to god, but the average peasant in Egypt also saw some modernisation in irrigation and crop cycles before western intervention and their fears would have been subsided the next time they saw the Nile rise. I'm sure they were pissed off about some posh wankers coming over telling them how to live their lives, but what I doubt is that it caused some great, long-lasting ideological impact (aside from a desire not to be conquered perhaps, but we all have that).
 
Can't stand Shapiro.

I quite like hearing Jordan Peterson speak. I don't agree with all his stances but he puts a lot of thought into understanding the human condition and why we observe certain phenomena. He's a psychologist by trade. I also find his arguments on compelled speech enthralling.

I don't know who Harris is.

I don't remember much about Hitchens but his view on religion was interesting.
 
entropy said:
What is a credible response to someone who is racist or bigoted towards other religions or cultures?
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A good starting point would be to see if the ideas in question are based in some sort of productive, fact based research as opposed to simple hateful rhetoric that you see yelled at minorities in various places. If its the former then you can actually engage them on the merits of the ideas and tell them where they are wrong.
 
Raoul said:
A good starting point would be to see if the ideas in question are based in some sort of productive, fact based research as opposed to simple hateful rhetoric that you see yelled at minorities in various places. If its the former then you can actually engage them on the merits of the ideas and tell them where they are wrong.
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An even better starting point would be to acknowledge Fischer and his tweet. As someone who has written about islamophobia, he might know a thing or two about the issue.
 
entropy said:
An even better starting point would be to acknowledge Fischer and his tweet. As someone who has written about islamophobia, he might know a thing or two about the issue.
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That's not a starting point. Its a continuation of a much longer debate related to Greenwald and Aslan's disdain for Harris, Hitchens et al.
 
entropy said:
This is a great thread about Harris and his Islamaphobic perspective. Something his followers are slowly beginning to realize now that he is more mainstream.
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I'm not sure I completely agree with some of the points being made in that thread. I'm no fan of Harris - my knowledge of him is limited, but like a lot of celebrity academics he comes across as massively self-important - but the guy posting in this thread seems to hold the perspective that religious beliefs should be respected and go unquestioned no matter what.

And as someone raised religiously, I can mostly understand that, and tend to find people who belittle others over their religion to be (like Harris) fairly self-important cocks. But at the same time...I do think religion is something that should be open to question, and when religious institutions have often been rife with abuse and corruption and worse going back, then someone being a bit mean to you due to your belief in something which doesn't really hold any scientific credibility isn't all that bad.

Obviously that shouldn't distract from wider discussions surrounding Islamophobia though, which is an obvious problem. More addressing the follow-up tweets in the thread.
 
Cheesy said:
I'm not sure I completely agree with some of the points being made in that thread. I'm no fan of Harris - my knowledge of him is limited, but like a lot of celebrity academics he comes across as massively self-important - but the guy posting in this thread seems to hold the perspective that religious beliefs should be respected and go unquestioned no matter what.

And as someone raised religiously, I can mostly understand that, and tend to find people who belittle others over their religion to be (like Harris) fairly self-important cocks. But at the same time...I do think religion is something that should be open to question, and when religious institutions have often been rife with abuse and corruption and worse going back, then someone being a bit mean to you due to your belief in something which doesn't really hold any scientific credibility isn't all that bad.

Obviously that shouldn't distract from wider discussions surrounding Islamophobia though, which is an obvious problem. More addressing the follow-up tweets in the thread.
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I'm not much of a Harris fan either. I find him rather annoying after a while for the reasons you describe. He comes across as a bit self-important. That said, there is a perfectly valid place for atheists to criticize the ideas that undergird religion without being called Islamaphobic, and in Harris' case many of the points he makes are grounded in fact and so its no big surprise that some who can't answer his claims would resort to the religious equivalient of the race card.
 
Silva said:
what I doubt is that it caused some great, long-lasting ideological impact
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We can actually witness this impact today, since the process of modernization is still uneven and incomplete, varying from place to place. For example, one of the great features of modernity has been the mass migration of rural peasantry to rapidly expanding urban areas. For migrants from rural areas of, say, the Punjab or Upper Egypt, the impact of this life-changing move can be extremely alienating - the first generation will often, with varying degrees of success, strive to replicate village life in whatever slum they end up in alongside neighbors from the same or similar rural regions. For the second generation, who typically have higher expectations of integration into modern urban life, the generally incoherent nature of life in the modern city confronts them with a range of temptations which challenge all the assumptions of the rural world they hail from - they find themselves caught between these temptations and the familiar, reassuring world of the village. This is why we often hear about how these migrants are caught between two worlds, with a foot in each but belonging to neither. Islamist groups exploit this unease by promising to bridge that divide by utilizing the seemingly familiar (Islam) to build a critique of both worlds, and in doing so promise to Islamize modernity.
 
Much of this started with the Ben Affleck / Sam Harris handbags....which was now 3.5 years ago.

 
The Kardashians are the reason atheists exist.
 
Affleck is annoying scrote at the best of times, but going up against Harris was never gonna end well :lol:
 
2cents said:
I don't think it's useful to draw a direct link between pre-modern religious attitudes and forms of religious bigotry and violence, and contemporary issues. The experience of being religious in the pre-modern world can't be adequately captured today, it was a time when the existence of God and the assumption that his spirit and will pervaded everything went pretty much unquestioned, bar the odd philosophical free-thinker. The modern world has the effect of calling this and all related assumptions into question, so that to be religious today means in many ways to be consciously religious. This heightened sense of religious consciousness is akin to being 'born again' or converted, so that sectarian sensitivities move beyond squabbles over who is right or wrong about God to the idea that sectarian rivals are allied to this modernity which constitutes a full-on assault on our very identity.
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That's actually something me and my political peer group have discussed not long ago, in connection with Adorno's term "disbelieved belief". Do you have any reading recommendations on this subject?
 
I don't know much about Harris. Are the things he's written serious psychology books or his own musings? I've studied psychology and I can't recall ever citing him. I could potentially force myself to look in to serious analysis of data if that's what he does. If it's him going 'so this statistic suggests this, which suggests this, which suggests this' for five hundred pages I most certainly cannot.

EDIT - Ignore me. Moment I pressed post I suddenly wondered if it was Harris or Peterson who was the psychologist. It's Peterson.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
That was brilliant. Affleck comes across as an absolute loon here.
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Harris' and Maher's agendas are better packaged for you? There's absolutely nothing new or brilliant in all that's said. Affleck's position is really good on this, you could almost hear him thinking of what to say during other people's turn to speak because he's not used to debating on live TV. Harris' views on this matter are so basic yet smug, that you can almost only get away with this on popular talk shows and not actual debates. Maher is a scrote.
 
hobbers said:
lol.

Affleck started off smug and was reduced to nothing but a petulant sulking child within 2 minutes. He had absolutely nothing to counter what was being said and did a very poor job in hiding that fact.
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You laughed out loud? Or is that just an internet debating tool mirroring your side of the televised debate at hand?

I'm sorry you think that Harris is in the know of the Muslim world beyond reading statistics conducted by some party that holds his own views.
 
Raoul said:
Much of this started with the Ben Affleck / Sam Harris handbags....which was now 3.5 years ago.

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Both of their views are giant over simplifications of a very complex problem. Affleck ends up 'losing' because he is too emotionally invested and not the brightest bulb.
 
Yeah, it is really stupid. He rejects some of the claims made by the bell curve paper regarding the same subject. He doubles down on genetic heritage and how Murray's thesis proves the claim that different races are just genetically smarter.
 
IhabX7 said:
Harris' and Maher's agendas are better packaged for you? There's absolutely nothing new or brilliant in all that's said. Affleck's position is really good on this, you could almost hear him thinking of what to say during other people's turn to speak because he's not used to debating on live TV. Harris' views on this matter are so basic yet smug, that you can almost only get away with this on popular talk shows and not actual debates. Maher is a scrote.
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As hobbers said, Affleck had absolutely nothing to offer. All religion is poisonous but Islam is clearly worse than others. Take a look at some of the research that has been done by Pew on some of the views that are commonly held my Muslims and tell me you are not absolutely disgusted by that, e.g. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/

Harris' statement that Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas and contrary to our liberal values is an important one and something I completely agree with.

Religion is a [deleted] and one can only hope that it will be eradicted sooner than later. Not by force but through arguments and education. And certainly not by misconceived tolerance towards the indefensible as displayed by Ben Affleck in the clip.
 
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